Last Sunday (February 9th, 2014) I went to Minō Kōen (Minō Park – 箕面公園). It is located North of Osaka (as I’m living in Toyonaka), so it was pretty quick to go there (see the map below).
One of the greatest things to me about Japan is that as soon as you get out of the city, you discover wonderful landscapes that can be flat but are usually mountains (earthquakes, you know…). And in Japanese mountains, there are rivers. A lot of rivers. And waterfalls. And shrines/temples. Oh, and you might be able to see wild monkeys too. Yes, for real! That’s what happened to us!
But that’s only for those who love Nature. If you are a geek only enjoying video games, hentai and being in big cities, that article is not for you. At all. Please leave now by turning your computer off. And don’t ever turn it back on. Ever. That’s an order.
So this is where Minō Kōen is located (click to enlarge).
As I said, very close to Toyonaka (less than 7km), and therefore pretty close to Osaka as well. We went by scooter, but – it’s obvious – you have to park at the entrance of the park. It’s about 2km from the parking to the waterfall. 
This parking is only for scooters, motorbikes and bikes (bicycles). Bikes are allowed anywhere, so you can keep riding it and head to the waterfall, but that’s not super convenient, and that defeats the purpose of coming to enjoy that beautiful park.
It’s also possible to come by car (but you’ll have to pay – it’s Japan!) or train, as the train station is near the park. Here is the location of the waterfall (click to enlarge):
And now, the photos!
Don’t feed the troll! No, wait…
The most expensive coffee ever:
Finally arriving at the waterfall:
And here comes the best part: the wild monkey!
As you can see, it’s a REAL wild monkey, not a pet from a zoo. That one was actually looking for food (no kidding…), preferably what humans eat (hell that’s tastier, we all know that!). So that “little” dude went down his tree several times to get food from people. And by “get”, it’s more like he doesn’t ask for permission. You can watch a video (from my YouTube channel) of him robbing walnuts from a Japanese couple. Pretty funny! :D
An old geezer fed him with some sweets or seeds wrapped in plastic. Despite the fact that it’s just forbidden (unless you want to pay a 100$ fine), it was very interesting to see that the monkey understood that plastic is not edible. Also he was very fast at opening them (and faster at eating, that is), I guess that wasn’t its first time. The bad thing is that those wastes are simply dumped in the environment.
A nice Japanese guy told us that some monkeys are so smart that they can use coins and go to buy food at vending machines. Can you believe that??? I wish I could record something like that, that would be epic!
And the icing on the cake (click to enlarge):
